tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post3068406859538327268..comments2018-03-15T04:34:37.321-06:00Comments on Atheist Ethicist: Effective ChangeAlonzo Fyfehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05687777216426347054noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-53015927187403772202012-09-25T06:43:00.905-06:002012-09-25T06:43:00.905-06:00In adendum, I hold that many of your claims are fa...In adendum, I hold that many of your claims are false or misleading. However, it is not the purpose of this post - or even this blog - to discuss such issues. The topic of this post is that effective change requires pressure from the outside - true or false?Alonzo Fyfehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05687777216426347054noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-8623840675324906092012-09-25T06:36:43.707-06:002012-09-25T06:36:43.707-06:00vicar
I do not find anything in your comment rele...<b>vicar</b><br /><br />I do not find anything in your comment relevant to my post. The uses of power you complain about are thise that the American people support - as shown by the lack of protest. Whereas if Obama were to try to close Gitmo by executive order, this would be usedagainst him in the election by an opposition party that would - I guarantee it - involve an attempt at impeachment if any government funds were used.<br /><br />The very differences between the abuses a President can get away with and those he cannot is determined by those that the people care about and those they do not.Alonzo Fyfehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05687777216426347054noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-85245859597468228562012-09-24T18:11:22.211-06:002012-09-24T18:11:22.211-06:00This is tremendously disingenuous.
Obama has been...This is tremendously disingenuous.<br /><br />Obama has been a fearless supporter of executive privilege, both in the usual legal sense of &quot;the executive branch doesn&#39;t have to explain its actions in court&quot; and in the expanded &quot;the executive branch can do whatever it wants provided it&#39;s an order from the president, and the other branches can go pound sand&quot;. How many Congressional votes has Obama had to send troops to the various places we now have them (such as the 5 -- yes, 5 -- countries in Africa we now have troops in)? When it&#39;s a matter of spying on us, or killing people -- even American citizens -- without trial, or leaking things which put the Obama administration in a good light, Obama just goes ahead and does it, and sends his lawyers to court to either claim the victims have no standing or that the actions cannot be brought to trial because of either national security or executive privilege.<br /><br />Obama only suddenly turns around and claims the obstruction of Congress as an excuse when it&#39;s something he doesn&#39;t want to do. He didn&#39;t want to do anything about DADT or DOMA -- in fact, he had attorneys arguing the anti-gay-rights side in court right up to the day he suddenly realized the polls were on the opposite side and he needed a wedge issue, and made his big announcement. He didn&#39;t want to pardon whistleblowers who expose government corruption (like Bradley Manning) even though that&#39;s explicitly his right, even though it was a campaign promise.<br /><br />Obama could quite easily just close Gitmo, and tell the people who start the inevitable backlash that it&#39;s a matter of both executive privilege and national security. It would be vastly more plausible, in fact, than most of the times he uses these claims. But he doesn&#39;t, because he doesn&#39;t want to. He likes Gitmo. He also likes bombing innocent people with unmanned drones, because he could stop that any time he pleases as well, and doesn&#39;t.<br /><br />Leaving this aside, he also had a period of 2 years in which he had majorities in both houses of Congress in which to get the closing of Gitmo through. But during that time, any time anyone asked about it, we were told that we had to wait because everyone had to work on health care reform -- which was a laugh, because Obamacare was negotiated from the start by Obama with the big hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and insurers behind closed doors, and anyone proposing anything else, such as a public option, got shut down by the president. Congress could easily have dealt with it then -- but Obama didn&#39;t ask for it.v1carhttp://v1car.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.com